Theater of the Mind

Dedicated to Bob Buck, manning the morning drive-time mike at KBZY in Salem, Oregon; Pete Hansen, one of the spontaneously funniest human beings ever; and Ron Radio, who first enlightened us to the mystique of the "theater of the mind."

Bob Buck, Pete Hansen, Ron Radio

After our previous screenings in the moviehouse took a look at films about standup comedians, it was brought to our attention that there is another breed of individuals who pursue their livelihood behind a microphone to entertain audiences. The job title "disc jockey" conjures various images, depending on the listener. Club DJs mix and play dance music in bars, clubs, and discotheques, hip hop DJs use multiple turntables to back up rap musicians, and mobile DJs with portable sound systems are hired to provide music for weddings, reunions, and parties, which is all well and good, but we’re interested in that solitary figure in a cramped radio station, spinning vinyl  records on a turntable. Vinyl gave way to CDs in the early 1980s, and digital music got rolling in the 1990s and has remained the universal format in radio stations for several years.

Radio pioneer Reginald Fessenden

In 1906, Canadian-born inventor Reginald Fessenden transmitted what was probably the first radio broadcast of a music recording - a contralto singing the opening aria of Handel’s opera "Xerxes" - from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

Ray Newby in his later years

In 1909, sixteen-year-old Ray Newby of Stockton, California, started playing records regularly on a small transmitter while attending Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless in San Jose, becoming, in essence, the first disc jockey. Within a year, widespread radio broadcasting included news reports and started airing live as well as recorded music.

Martin Block in his "Make Believe Ballroom"

In 1935, famed radio commentator Walter Winchell first used the phrase "disc jockey" to describe New York City’s Martin Block, whose "Make Believe Ballroom" created the illusion of broadcasts from a real ballroom with top bands performing live. "Disc jockey" first appeared in print in Variety in 1941.

On the Air On the Screen

The first disc jockey to become a bona fide movie star was Alan Freed, a Cleveland DJ who rocked the boat in the early 1950s by playing African-American rhythm and blues artists, at a time when other stations were playing cover versions of "colored" music by white musicians. It was Freed who introduced the phrase "rock and roll"  to radio lexicon, establishing himself in history as the "father of rock and roll."

Freed became one of rock and roll’s pioneering concert promoters, which led to screen roles (as himself) in a number of teen-targeted movies featuring many of the popular music acts of the day, all similarly titled: "Rock Around the Clock," "Don’t Knock the Rock," "Mister Rock and Roll," "Rock Rock Rock!" He hosted the television program "The Big Beat," which preceded Dick Clark’s "American Bandstand," only to see it abruptly canceled when Southern affiliates objected to an image of black R&B singer Frankie Lymon caught on camera dancing with a young white woman. Freed’s career ended ignominiously when he was fired from New York’s WABC after it was proven he had accepted payola from record companies to play only certain artists.

The filmmakers of 1978’s "American Hot Wax" - producer Art Linson ("The Untouchables"), screenwriter John Kaye ("Where the Buffalo Roam"), and director Floyd Mutrux - juggled chronology and played fast and loose with the facts but at least conveyed a genuine affection for period nostalgia in a fictionalized depiction of Alan Freed’s last days in New York radio. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, among others, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, perform onscreen, while, amid supporting players Fran Drescher, Jay Leno, and Laraine Newman (not to mention 21-year-old Cameron Crowe, future director of "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous," as a delivery boy), Tim McIntire maintains a formidable presence as the irrepressible Freed: "You can stop me, but you’re never gonna stop rock and roll!"

John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan pose with son Tim McIntire

In his brief life, Tim McIntire - who died of congestive heart failure after a lengthy struggle with alcohol, drugs, and weight at the age of 41 (two years younger than Alan Freed when he succumbed to kidney failure and cirrhosis) - enjoyed an eclectic show business career. The son of veteran western character actor John McIntire and actress Jeanette Nolan, Tim made his feature film debut as one of Civil War pacifist James Stewart’s brood in 1965’s "Shenandoah."

Jean Stapleton and Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Edith; Kelly Jean Peters
as Gloria and Tim McIntire as Richard in the television pilot "Justice for All"

In 1968, McIntire was cast as Richard in Norman Lear’s TV pilot "Justice for All," starring Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith Justice. The surname was changed to Bunker, McIntire was replaced by Rob Reiner (as Mike Stivic), and the series became "All in the Family."

An adept musician, McIntire composed the music score for (and narrated) "Jeremiah Johnson," the 1972 mountain man saga starring Robert Redford and directed by Sydney Pollack. McIntire also provided the music and the voice of the sarcastic, telepathic dog Blood for the 1975 science fiction cult favorite "A Boy and His Dog," based on the short story by Harlan Ellison, starring a pre-"Miami Vice" Don Johnson, and directed by Sam Peckinpah stock company player L.Q. Jones.

McIntire, whose other memorable screen roles included "The Gumball Rally" and "Brubaker," was praised in reviews of "American Hot Wax" for his "particularly energetic" performance, creating "a convincing, complex Freed." The same could not be said of "The Breakfast Club" alumnus Judd Nelson’s title role in the 1999 made-for-television movie "Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Alan Freed Story," a melodramatic whitewash featuring Paula Abdul as one of Freed’s girlfriends.

By the time George Lucas’ "American Graffiti" made Wolfman Jack a movie star in 1973, the charismatic DJ (born Robert Weston Smith) was already an international celebrity. He began his radio career in 1960 in the city of Newport News, Virginia, as "Daddy Jules," then "Roger Gordon and Music in Good Taste." He relocated to a Shreveport, Louisiana, country music station as manager and morning DJ, calling himself "Big Smith with the Records."

A pre-"Wolfman Jack" Robert Weston Smith

In the tradition of Alan Freed, who had adopted the nickname "Moon Dog," after a New York City street musician, and used a recorded howl on his broadcasts, Smith developed his famous alter ego, "Wolfman Jack," allegedly inspired by blues artist Howlin’ Wolf, in Shreveport, and added his own sound effects. By 1963, he was working at XERF-AM, a super station in Mexico with a high-powered blaster signal that could be picked up throughout much of the U.S. Smith left Mexico after eight months to run a station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, continuing his broadcasts on XERF on taped shows. He returned to border radio, this time on XERB-AM and opened an office on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1966, where he recorded his shows for the border station.

At his peak, Wolfman Jack was heard on more than 2000 radio stations in 53 countries. Don Kelley, who became Smith’s personal manager and business partner, recognized in Wolfman Jack the potential to become more than just a cult radio personality and started to transform him into a mainstream entertainer in film and television and in music.

Wolfman Jack made several public appearances, usually as an emcee for rock bands at Los Angeles clubs. He served as the announcer and frequent guest host on NBC’s late-night Friday musical variety series "The Midnight Special" in the 1970s. He released two albums, in 1972 and 1973, and his 1972 single "I Ain’t Never Seen a White Man" hit #102 on Billboard’s Singles Chart.

"I ain't never seen a white man
I ain't never seen a black man
I ain't never seen a red man
I ain't never seen a yellow man
Only man I ever saw looks just like you and me"

As a teenager in Modesto, California, in 1962, George Lucas, not unlike countless other American teenagers that were part of the post-World War II baby boom generation, enjoyed cruising while listening to rock and roll on the car radio. He was fascinated by Wolfman Jack and had even considered making a documentary about him when he was a student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

When Lucas was making the stark science fiction film "THX 1138" in 1971, his friend Francis Ford Coppola suggested Lucas come up with a script for a movie that would appeal to mainstream audiences. The result was "American Graffiti," a phenomenally successful coming-of-age mosaic of high school graduates set in a single night in Modesto in 1962. Lucas reflected, "Cruising is gone, and I felt compelled to document the whole experiences and what my generation used as a way of meeting girls." In another interview, he explained, "That was my life. I spent four years driving around the main street of Modesto, chasing girls. It was the mating ritual of my times, before it disappeared and everybody got into psychedelia and drugs." Not to mention the assassination of JFK and the war in Vietnam.

"The reality" of the film, in the words of The Movie Brats authors Michael Pye and Linda Myles, "the underpinning is the music." According to sound designer Walter Murch, "George wrote the script with his old forty-fives playing in the background." Pye and Myles noted, "The structure of the film comes from the radio…the songs that disc jockey Wolfman Jack plays. Characters take cues from the music. And Wolfman Jack is the unseen center of it all, father figure as much as circus master."

Rumors abounded that Wolfman Jack broadcast from an ever circling airplane, that his fondness for rhythm and blues proved he had to be a black man. "American Graffiti" co-producer Gary Kurtz recalled how Wolfman Jack’s voice "would drift all over the West. He would come and go over California on the whim of the weather. While you were listening, he would suddenly fade away; it was a strange, ethereal feeling." So ethereal that when the character of college-bound Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) dares to drive to the remote radio outpost to enlist the Wolfman’s aid in locating the mystery blonde in an elusive white T-bird, he finds only a raspy, soft-spoken station manager who likes Popsicles and says that Wolfman Jack exists solely on tape. The station manager is, of course, Wolfman Jack.

In lieu of a salary, George Lucas offered Wolfman Jack a fraction of a "point" - the division of profits from a motion picture - and the DJ ended up with a comfortable income for the rest of his life. He continued working, hosting his own syndicated variety series, providing his voice for The Guess Who’s 1974 top 40 hit single "Clap for the Wolfman," and playing a cameo role as Reverend Billy in the 1980 cult horror comedy "Motel Hell."

In the summer of 1995, after a lengthy tour promoting his autobiography, Have Mercy! Confessions of the Original Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal, all Smith wanted to do was go home and hug Lou, his wife of 34 years. "I haven’t missed her this much in years," he said. Lonnie Napier, vice president of Wolfman Jack Entertainment, recalled, "He walked up the driveway, went in to hug his wife, and then just fell over." He died of a heart attack in Belvidere, North Carolina, on July 1, 1995, age 57.

The bittersweet "whatever-happened-to" closing titles of "American Graffiti" inform us that actor Charles Martin Smith’s character, "Toad," went missing-in-action overseas in An Loc in South Vietnam in 1965. By the mid-1960s, U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War had escalated dramatically under Presiden Lyndon B. Johnson. It was in that milieu, from 1965 to 1966, where Adrian Cronauer, a U.S. Air Force sergeant, broadcast a rock and roll program on Armed Forces Radio called "Dawn Buster."

Young Adrian Cronauer looks nothing like Robin Williams.

In 1979, Cronauer tried to pitch a TV sitcom based on his experiences, but television executives didn’t see war as comedic material (never mind that the biggest TV hit at the time was "M*A*S*H"). Cronauer retooled the sitcom into a script for a made-for-television movie, which attracted the attention of Robin Williams. Very little of Cronauer’s material remained after writer Mitch Markowitz was brought in to bulldoze over most of the original ideas and overhaul the project as "Good Morning, Vietnam," a biopic a la Robin Williams (think "Awakenings," "Patch Adams’), although Cronauer would later say that the 1987 film was about 45 percent accurate.

As directed - or unleashed - by Barry Levinson - Williams’ onscreen broadcasts were improvised on the spot. Claiming if he attempted half of what Williams did onscreen, he would have been court-martialed and sentenced to Fort Leavenworth, Cronauer admitted it would have been fun to get away with such antics. He complained that Williams’ performance misrepresented him as anti-war, when he maintained he was "anti-stupidity." An active Republican, Cronauer was a vice-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

"Good Morning, Vietnam" star Robin Williams poses with costars Bruno Kirby,
Floyd Vivino (best known as the host of New Jersey TV's "kiddie" program "The
Uncle Floyd Show"), Richard Portnow, Robert Wuhl, and Forest Whitaker.

According to Michael Lanning, author of 1994’s Vietnam at the Movies, a Vietnam veteran, and the unquestionable authority on all movies Vietnam, "Good Morning, Vietnam" could be faulted for depicting Saigon surrounded by Thai mountains. "Vehicles, uniforms, and equipment are either clearly wrong or of a vintage more recent than 1965," Lanning noted. "Officers and NCOs are Hollywood stereotypes: dumb, rank-abusing, red-necked and humorless." Cronauer recalled, "I don’t think I had any sergeant major try to get me killed, and I don’t think I ever had a friend who was a Viet Cong." Cronauer did teach English, although not in pursuit of a pretty local girl. Nor was Cronauer abruptly shuttled out of Vietnam by military brass; he simply left because his tour was over.

Vietnam was alluded to in 1971’s "Vanishing Point," a faux existential fable in the form of a counterculture road movie, starring Barry Newman as Kowalski, a Benzedrine-popping decorated Vietnam veteran-former race driver-ex-cop car delivery driver who bets he can deliver a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. Pursued by police, Kowalski is championed as "the last American hero" by a blind black disc jockey named "Super Soul" (Cleavon Little).

The two disparate characters develop a seemingly psychic bond as "Super Soul" broadcasts, "And there goes the Challenger…the electric centaur, the demigod, the super driver of the golden west…the last beautiful free soul on this planet." (Screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante claimed "Super Soul" was based on legendary rock and roll singer The Big Bopper.)

Kowalski (Barry Newman) seeks roadside assistance from the Nude Motorcycle
Rider (Gilda Texter) in "Vanishing Point." Texter, who remained completely naked
for her performance, is, coincidentally, a prolific costume supervisor on over 40
films and television shows, including "Romancing the Stone," "The Green Mile,"
and "Seinfeld."

(Needlessly remade for TV, the 1997 "Vanishing Point" featured Viggo Mortensen, future star of director Peter Jackson’s "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and Jason Priestley as "The Voice," a libertarian talk radio shock jock.)

Cleavon Little (best known for his breakout role as Sheriff Bart in Mel Brooks’ "Blazing Saddles") played a DJ again in 1978’s "FM," a manufactured "now" picture about a rebel Los Angeles radio station defying corporate sponsorship and military recruitment ads. Michael Brandon, a B-list actor who went on to narrate the U.S. versions of "Thomas the Tank Engine" videos (he also appeared as Senator Brandt in the 2011 film "Captain America: The First Avenger"), stars as the with-it station manager and program director (you can tell he’s a rebel by his beard), a character loosely based on Mikel "Captain Mikey" Herrington, an innovative program director at KMET in Los Angeles (where "FM" screenwriter Ezra Sacks once worked) who pioneered progressive, album-oriented rock.

Mikel Hunter Herrington, best known as "Captain Mikey"

The Robert Altman-wannabe cast of oddball DJs includes Martin Mull (in his first feature film role after costarring in TV’s "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and "Fernwood Tonight") and Cleavon Little’s "Blazing Saddles" costar Alex Karras.

Cassie Yates, Cleavon Little, Martin Mull, Michael Brandon,
Alex Karras, and Eileen Brennan star in "FM."

The "Now Story With Now Music!" had live concert appearances by Linda Rondstadt (pictured below), Jimmy Buffett, Tom Petty, and REO Speedwagon, while the hit soundtrack album featured Steely Dan, Joe Walsh, Dan Fogelberg, Eagles, James Taylor, Billy Joel, and Queen. Rolling Stone magazine claimed the movie and soundtrack were biased toward acts managed by MCA record chief Irving Azoff.

A.V. Club critic Keith Phipps complained, "(‘FM’) gets the standard rock movie formula backwards by trying to base a revolution around some of the safest, least revolutionary music in the history of rock." Overall, Dave Kehr, of the Chicago Reader, deemed it an "embarrassing youth cult film, founded on the shaky premise that the staff of a ‘progressive’ LA rock station have to fight their management for the right to play Olivia Newton-John."

The cast of "WKRP in Cincinnati": (clockwise from the front)
Loni Anderson, Frank Bonner, Richard Sanders, Gordon Jump,
Gary Sandy, Tim Reid, Jan Smithers, Howard Hesseman

"WKRP in Cincinnati," the popular TV comedy about a motley crew of misfits at a top 40 rock and roll radio station, was perceived by some as a small-screen rip-off of "FM," especially since the sitcom’s hip station manager, played by Gary Sandy, was, like "FM’s" Michael Brandon, based on KMET’s "Captain Mikey." "WKRP" creator Hugh Wilson insisted that his show was already in development before "FM" was released.

The premise of a mixed bag of nuts running a radio station gets out of hand in 2009’s "Pirate Radio," the story of a renegade station and its crew of DJs who broadcast "Radio Rock" to the United Kingdom from an old fishing trawler anchored in the North Sea while uptight meanies in the British government conspire to shut them down.

In fact, several ships anchored in international waters housed radio stations in the mid-1960s, broadcasting rock and roll music that was shunned by BBC Radio, which preferred airing jazz standards and easy listening tunes. The movie's Radio Rock is based on the real-life pirate station Radio Caroline.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as "The Count" and Nick Frost as "Doctor" Dave

The boatload of merry pranksters at the maverick station, run by Bill Nighy (best known as Viktor in the "Underworld" film series, Davy Jones in a couple of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" pictures, and Simon Pegg’s stepfather in "Shaun of the Dead"), includes Rhys Ifans (Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Nick Frost (Simon Pegg’s sidekick in "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and "Paul"), and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the station’s star DJ, "The Count." The Count is based on Michael Joseph Pasternak (the son of Hollywood producer Joe Pasternak), an American disc jockey who, as "Emperor Rosko," broadcast from Radio Caroline and BBC 1 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Michael Pasternak, aka "Emperor Rosko"

The villain of the piece, a government minister who denounces pirate radio as "a sewer of dirty commercialism and no morals," is played by Kenneth Branagh as if he were Snidley Whiplash (all that’s missing is a mustache twirl and a "Nyah-ah-ahh!"). As if the message wasn’t clear enough, the boorish prig has two toadies named Mr. Twatt and Miss Clitt. (Emma Thompson, Branagh’s former wife, appears in a cameo role.)

Originally titled "The Boat That Rocked," the film was written and directed by Richard Curtis (the veddy British screenwriter of "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," "Bridget Jones’s Diary," "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," co-screenwriter of Steven Spielberg’s "War Horse," and writer-director of "Love Actually"). The critical consensus seemed to be that Curtis had the knack to pull together a dream cast for "Pirate Radio" but not the ingenuity to take advantage of it. Critic Leonard Maltin noted, "Once the film sets its premise it goes nowhere." Quite simply, there are way too many characters way too full of themselves having way more fun than the audience.

Clint Eastwood contended with an antagonist of a different sort when he made his directing debut in 1971 with "Play Misty for Me," casting himself as an egotistical jazz radio disc jockey whose one night fling with a fan goes awry when she turns out be a deranged stalker. As related in Richard Schickel’s 1996 biography of the filmmaker, according to Eastwood, the studio heads wondered, "Why would you want to play a disc jockey, and why would anybody want to see Clint Eastwood play a disc jockey?…Why would you want to play in a picture where the woman has the best role?" Eastwood laconically replied, "I don’t know, why does anybody want to see anything? It’s a good suspense story."

Clint Eastwood is surprised by Jessica Walter's wardrobe
in "Play Misty for Me."

In an earlier interview, Eastwood said, "After seventeen years of bouncing my head against the wall…I’m at the point where I’m ready to make my own pictures. I stored away all the mistakes I made and saved up all the good things I learned, and now I know enough to control my own projects and get what I want out of actors." And what he got out of Jessica Walter as the fragile, suicidal, homicidal stalker was a tour de force, the first in a long line of strong performances Eastwood would elicit from actresses which established him as a "feminist filmmaker." The studio wanted a better known actress, but after noticing her standout performance in director Sidney Lumet’s "The Group," a 1966 ensemble drama that also featured Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, and Elizabeth Hartman, Eastwood insisted on Walter.

The film, which succeeds as a psychological thriller (foreshadowing later stalker films like "Fatal Attraction") and a lovely postcard for Eastwood’s home stomping ground of Carmel-by-the-Sea (including scenes shot at the Monterey Jazz Festival), features a music score by Dee Barton, a jazz trombonist and big band drummer who also provided the eerie score for Eastwood’s "High Plains Drifter." The soundtrack debuted Roberta Flack’s hit love song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

About 120 miles up the California coast from Eastwood’s beloved Carmel-by-the-Sea is the historic 1870 Point Reyes lighthouse, which co-writer-director John Carpenter utilized as the home of fictional radio station KAB in the anticipated follow-up to his 1978 breakthrough hit "Halloween." A good old-fashioned ghost story worthy of H.P. Lovecraft, "The Fog" takes place in the fictional coastal community of Antonio Bay, the centennial celebration of which is crashed by the leprous spirits from a clipper ship that was deliberately wrecked and plundered by the town founders 100 years earlier.

The cast featured Jamie Lee Curtis (who made her screen debut in "Halloween"), Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee Curtis’ real-life mother who was immortalized as the shower victim in Alfred Hitchcock’s "Psycho"), Hal Holbrook, Tom Atkins, and John Houseman.

Adrienne Barbeau, who was married to John Carpenter at the time, made her feature film debut in "The Fog" as Stevie Wayne, the sultry-voiced night disc jockey at KAB. From 1972 to 1978, Barbeau played Bea Arthur’s daughter on the Norman Lear sitcom "Maude." In her 2006 autobiography, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, she remembered her experience on "Maude": "What I didn’t know is that when I said (my lines) I was usually walking down a flight of stairs and no one was even listening to me. They were just watching my breasts precede me." She also recalled, "I actually thought CBS asked me to be on ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ because they thought I was athletic…who cared if I won the race, as long as I bounced when I ran?"

Adrienne Barbeau (or her stand-in) navigates the 300 steps down  to
the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse.

Barbeau has one scene with her son in "The Fog" and a climactic showdown with rotting ghosts atop the lighthouse, but is otherwise alone onscreen. More recently, Adrienne Barbeau played Ruthie the snake dancer on the HBO series "Carnivale" and Nina in "Argo."

In lieu of a picture of Adrienne Barbeau from either
"Carnivale" or "Argo," this is her popular 1978 cheecake poster. 

Up and Down the Dial

Beyond the titles already discussed, a number of movies have featured disc jockeys in cameo roles or as secondary characters. Real-life DJ Don Steele, who gained fame as "The Real Don Steele" on Los Angeles’ KHJ (which he dubbed "Boss Radio in Boss Angeles"), popped up as outrageous disc jockey "Screamin’ Steve Stevens" in the 1979 cult comedy classic "Rock ‘n’ Roll High School," starring P.J. Soles and The Ramones, directed by Allan Arkush. Steele also appeared in or provided his voice for "Death Race 2000" (1975), "Grand Theft Auto" (Ron Howard’s directing debut in 1977), "Eating Raoul" (1982), and "Gremlins" (1984).

"The Real Don Steele" clowns around with Sonny & Cher.

Humble Harve Miller, who likewise achieved his greatest fame at Los Angeles superstation KHJ, as a nighttime DJ, portrayed mellifluous-voiced disc jockey "Dr. J" in 1980’s "The Hollywood Knights," "American Hot Wax" director Floyd Mutrux’s not-at-all subtle "American Graffiti" imitation, depicting the antics and pranks of a car club on Halloween night in 1965, the eve of the closing of their beloved burger hangout, Tubby’s Drive-In.

Humble Harve Miller once served time for manslaughter
in the 1971 death of his adulterous wife.

As unforgivable as trespassing into George Lucas’ turf gets (including the inevitable foreboding references to Vietnam), "The Hollywood Knights" does have flashes of spontaneous laughs - thanks to a solid cast of assured comedic actors, including Fran Drescher, Leigh French (a favorite of ours as "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’s" flower child Goldie O’Keefe), Stuart Pankin, Gailard Sartain, Richard Schaal, and Garry Goodrow - and moments of unaffected sentimentality. Among the pledges hoping to be initiated into the Hollywood Knights is Mike Binder, standup comedian (famous for his "A Day at Disneyland" routine) turned director ("The Upside of Anger," "Reign Over Me").

"The Hollywood Knights" was the first feature film for Michelle Pfeiffer, "Taxi" costar Tony Danza, and Robert Wuhl, who steals the show as the Knights’ lead prankster, Newbomb Turk, whose flatulent performance of "Volaré" at a high school prep rally is burst-out-laughing riotous.

Fran Drescher and Robert Wuhl share a quiet moment
amid the mayhem in "The Hollywood Knights."

The film was ranked #10 in Hot Rod Magazine’s 2006 list of Top 40 Best Car Movies on DVD (#1, not surprisingly, was "American Graffiti.") Humble Harve Miller also participated in 1994’s "There Goes My Baby," another wistfully nostalgic, coming-of-age postcard from writer-director Floyd Mutrux. Mutrux also executive-produced Warren Beatty’s 1990 film "Bugsy" and wrote the screen story for 1996’s "Mulholland Falls."

Unnamed and unseen except for her mouth at the microphone, the late and greatly missed Lynne Thigpen lent her inimitable voice as the omniscient DJ in director Walter Hill’s 1979 comic strip-colored street gang fantasy "The Warriors," while deadpan comedian Steven Wright provided the voice for a disc jockey in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 bungled-heist thriller "Reservoir Dogs." Kabuki rockers Kiss’ tongue-twisting Gene Simmons had a cameo as a DJ called "Nuke" in the 1986 slasher flick "Trick or Treat," starring Marc Price (Michael J. Fox’s nerdy pal Skippy on "Family Ties"), with Ozzy Osbourne as a televangelist, directed by "Toad" from "American Graffiti," Charles Martin Smith.

"Today's temperature's gonna rise over 100 degrees, so there's a Jheri curl alert!
...If you have a Jheri curl, stay in the house or you'll end up with
a permanent black helmet on your head, fuh-ever!"

Samuel L. Jackson attempted to maintain cool heads on the hottest day of the summer in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn as DJ "Mister Senor Love Daddy" in filmmaker Spike Lee’s explosive 1989 landmark drama "Do the Right Thing."

"How can you pluralize Lone Ranger?...There's three of you.
You're not exactly lone. Shouldn't you be the Three Rangers?"

Joe Mantegna provided the voice of reason as "Rebel Radio" disc jockey Ian "The Shark" in 1994’s "Airheads," featuring Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler as a dimwitted band called "The Lone Rangers" who hold the radio station hostage with toy guns in order to get their song on the air. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine called the comedy "a dumbed-down ‘Dog Day Afternoon’" with "a gifted cast of zanies," among them Michael McKean, Chris Farley, Ernie Hudson, Judd Nelson, Amy Locane, Nina Siemaszko, David Arquette, Michael Richards, Harold Ramis, Rob Zombie, and Lemmy from Motorhead. Travers noted, "It’s fluff done with flair."

On the Air On the Tube

Bob Crane, whose wisecracking shenanigans outwitted the Nazis for six seasons on "Hogan’s Heroes," began his career as a DJ in 1950 in New York and Connecticut before relocating to Los Angeles where he hosted the number one-rated morning show on KNX. With guests the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope, he became known as "The King of the Los Angeles Air Waves."

Before manning the boom mike as the drolly nonsensical announcer on "Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In," Gary Owens launched his career in radio as news director at KORN in Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1952. He subsequently moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, then Omaha, Nebraska, followed by Dallas, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Denver. In 1959, he worked in Sacramento, then Oakland, before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1961 on KMPC, where he remained for two decades.

Jay Thomas with Rhea Perlman in "Cheers"

Jay Thomas, a comedic actor known for his recurring roles on a number of TV sitcoms, including "Mork & Mindy," "Cheers," and "Murphy Brown," was a top-rated morning DJ on New York City’s WXRK, just prior to Howard Stern. He ended up in Los Angeles, where he was eventually awarded a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame for Radio. Thomas has hosted his own show on Sirius Satellite Radio since 2005.

Danny Bonaduce, ‘70s child star from "The Partridge Family" who matured into one of television’s treasured train wrecks, became an on-and-off radio personality between arrests for possessing cocaine, brawling with "Survivor" contestants, and beating up transvestite prostitutes. Since 2011, the pugnacious Bonaduce has hosted a morning radio talk show in Seattle.

Fictionally, in a flashback episode during the fourth season of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in 1965, it was revealed that Rob Petrie was a disc jockey in his hometown of Danville, Illinois, at a low-rated radio station which hopes to snap out of its slump by breaking a 99-hour 50-minute endurance record held by a Houston DJ with Rob broadcasting nonstop from a department store window. The episode was aptly titled "One Hundred Terrible Hours."

Joby Baker and Ronnie Schell in "Good Morning, World,"
which costarred Goldie Hawn as a gossipy neighbor

In 1967, Ronnie Schell took a break from playing country bumpkin Jim Nabors’ streetwise pal Duke Slater on "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." to star as a drive-time DJ in "Good Morning, World," a sitcom co-created by Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard which lasted one season before Schell returned to "Gomer Pyle" for its final season.

All Talk

A word or two about talk radio, a different breed of animal altogether, meriting a saga of its own, when all the aspects - news talk, conservative talk, liberal talk, sports talk - are considered, but until then, we offer a recap of "headlines" when it comes to talk radio on film and television.

Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern in "The King of Marvin Gardens"

In 1970, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Anthony Perkins starred in "WUSA," the call letters for a New Orleans radio station embroiled in an ultra-right wing conspiracy. Jack Nicholson reunited with his "Five Easy Pieces" director, Bob Rafelson, in 1972’s "The King of Marvin Gardens," portraying, a bookish, depressive radio talk show host lured into a real estate scam in Atlantic City by his scheming brother, played by Nicholson’s longtime pal, Bruce Dern.

Controversy-fueled director Oliver Stone cast Eric Bogosian as a caustic liberal radio host in the appropriately titled "Talk Radio" (1988), expanded from Bogosian’s play. The frenetic genius of filmmaker Terry Gilliam ("The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," "The Brothers Grimm") found Jeff Bridges as a self-centered shock jock seeking redemption by helping a homeless man (Robin Williams) whose life he had inadvertently shattered in 1991’s allegorical "The Fisher King."

Nick Nolte in "Mother Night"

Ellen Barkin’s role as a sports radio jockey was the sole redeeming factor in 1996’s "The Fan," an overblown thriller with Robert De Niro typecast as the demented stalker of baseball superstar Wesley Snipes, directed by the reliably overheated Tony Scott. That same year, Nick Nolte portrayed a Nazi propagandist whose anti-Semitic radio broadcasts during World War II are actually secret codes transmitting information to Allied forces in "Mother Night," based on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel.

Shock jock Howard Stern starred as himself in the surprisingly charming 1997 autobiographical comedy "Private Parts," produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by Betty Thomas, while David Spade portrayed a custodian at a Los Angeles radio station who relates his white-trash odyssey to smarmy talk show host Dennis Miller in 2001’s "Joe Dirt."

Jodie Foster in "The Brave One"

Kevin Costner was an alcoholic retired baseball player turned radio talk show host in the 2005 drama "The Upside of Anger," directed by the previously mentioned Mike Binder (who appears as Costner’s producer). "The Brave One" (2007) starred Jodie Foster as a New York City radio show host who becomes a gun-toting vigilante in what critic Leonard Maltin deemed "a high-toned ‘Death Wish’" as directed by Neil Jordan.

This seemed inevitable, but filmmakers combined an edgy paranoia-slanted talk radio show with a zombie outbreak triggered by toxic viral gas in 2009’s "Dead Air."

Joanna Gleason, McLean Stevenson, George Memmoli of "Hello, Larry"

On TV, in 1979, McLean Stevenson (beloved as Lt. Col. Henry Blake on "M*A*S*H") played a divorced father of two daughters and radio talk show host in Portland, Oregon, in "Hello, Larry." The sitcom, which  lasted only two seasons, became a much-ridiculed brunt of jokes and was ranked by TV Guide in 2002 as one of TV’s "50 Worst Shows of All Time."

Kelsey Grammer fared better in the Pacific Northwest for 11 seasons of "Frasier" as the psychiatrist who left his Boston barstool in "Cheers" to host a radio advice show in Seattle.

Dave Foley portrayed the boyish news director and ringmaster for the eccentric and inept staff at a New York City AM station in "NewsRadio" (1995-1999), costarring Phil Hartman, Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, Vicki Lewis, and Stephen Root. The tragic death of Hartman in 1998 nearly spelled the end of the series, but Jon Lovitz was brought on board as the new, chronically insecure news anchor.

From 1988 to 1991, Gary Cole (best known as the painfully obtuse Lumberg in "Office Space") starred in the moody, noirish series "Midnight Caller" as an ex-detective who hosts an overnight radio talk show as "The Nighthawk."

Episodes of "Midnight Caller" invariably ended with "The Nighthawk" giving his listeners a message which we found a fitting coda for our particular journey: "Good night, America…wherever you are."